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Risks of reactionary thinking in the age of austerity

The big yellow machines are
already starting to rip into the old biological station buildings in Saint
Andrews. It’s the physical end of one era and the beginning of another.

And this new era is not getting
off to the best start. The oceans are under catastrophic stress, and the
federal government is cutting back on science funding, including the
mothballing of the new library at the biological station, and officially
stifling the voices of science staff across the country.

If ever there were a time we
needed the help of marine scientists and good government environmental
protection policies, it would be now. Or better yet, yesterday.

But we’ve also known for quite
some time that these things were not going to get better. These are not recent
changes in the Canadian government. Since the signing of the Kyoto Accord on
climate change Canada has been backing away from a leadership role on the
environment front, instead focusing attention on supporting business and
resource development, essentially removing environmental hurdles for big
business.

And it’s exactly this blending of
business interests with environmental protection that caused the problem in the
first place. Canada’s government research into advancing aquaculture,
engineering fish genetics and improving ocean food productivity has all been
conducted at great expense: our attention, both scientifically and politically,
has been diverted away from protecting the wild ocean ecosystems. Instead,
Canada’s scientists have been working to advance the interests of big business under
the guise of “creating” jobs.

What is new is the Save Ocean
Science movement in St. Andrews. On Wednesday it’ll be hosting a meeting at the
Huntsman Marine Science Centre theatre to discuss the effects of the government cutbacks on the
biological station.

There will be a couple of retired scientists speaking, along with a
couple of politicians and the town’s mayor, but not surprisingly, no
representatives from the biological station or the Huntsman. It promises to be
an informative session, and I’d urge you to attend.

But the plain fact is, why wasn’t this campaign started a decade ago
when it mattered more?

In the meantime, the Huntsman has turned into an industrial fish science
centre blended into a public education facility. Slick PR messages for
corporations such as Connor’s Brothers and Paturel lobster grace their new
aquarium’s front entry. It’s little wonder that the public is confused, cynical
and disengaged.

The town (and region) has had the same predictably reactionary response
to its tourism challenges. Seven years ago, in a large public meeting, the
town’s leaders and business people were warned that the tourism industry was
facing challenges, the most serious of which was business succession and new
product development. Instead, the town has been focusing on marketing and
promotions.

The sad fact remains that most of St. Andrews’ business owners are aging
and that many of the local retail operations are for sale. Our publicly owned
hotel has been sold, with no guarantees to the local people. Half of the
employees were laid off, ostensibly due to the renovations. That asset is now
in the hands of a real estate developer in Halifax, which now controls our signature
golf course, our outdoor swimming pool and our small local beach as well as the
hotel. That is a huge portion of our local infrastructure, which has been
historically controlled to some extent by locals since it was first built.

Foreign ownership should now be as much of a concern in St. Andrews as
it is in the rest of Canada, which has by far the highest rate of foreign
ownership in the developed world. Asian money, which was, ironically, first
brought in under government partnership funding and allowed local speculators
collect $50,000 per new investor, is now translating into Asian purchasers of
local businesses.

While this may provide a welcome exit strategy for aging retailers, it
also promises to permanently alter the culture of this small town. And when it
comes to tourism, culture actually matters. Rather than actively marketing to
find new, young Canadian buyers for our local businesses, we are willing to
accept whatever comes, putting the control of our future into the hands of
fate. Somehow, that may not exactly be the wisest community development
strategy.

Meanwhile, John and Lucinda
Flemer (local philanthropists) have written a letter to the editor of this
paper outlining their concerns about the closure of the biological station
library. Of course their opinions are valuable, but not any more so than Mr.
Smith’s or Mr. Henderson’s, men who worked tirelessly as volunteers to get the
new Huntsman aquarium funded and built. Built, yes, but not yet finished.

As I mentioned, product
development should be front and centre here. But the parking lot and
landscaping around the Huntsman aquarium is a travesty, and one would welcome
the assistance of the Flemers, who are directly involved in a landscaping
business, to clean up this front door embarrassment to an otherwise wonderful
attraction.

Much as I love St. Andrews, it
has always been more into preserving its status quo, taking the easy way out
and reacting to change, than designing a better future for itself. And in the
end, that may prove to be its own undoing.

Comments

...it has always been more into preserving its status quo, taking the easy way out and reacting to change, than designing a better future for itself. And in the end, that may prove to be its own undoing.

is working happily on the second half of life and the interior journey. Living on the East Coast of Canada a.k.a the Right Coast. Doing strategic visioning. Raising kids. Moderating my expectations of almost everything. About this blog? New thoughts plus a collection of old newspaper columns… Essentially philosophy as it collides with the real world.